Dear Editor,
All the banks showed no distinct deterioration in their profit during the entire covid period or even over the last 10 years or so generally… and I am sure they did all they could, accounting wise, to keep their declared profits at a level so it would not have been seen as embarrassing or suspicious to the public, the business sector and the government who were all experiencing hard times.
They were making their money from loans/ overdrafts largely from the state, the many state Enterprises and of course the increased inflows from “dark money” most of which was in the form of Forex.
Such inflows usually increase who is allowed to when the legal inflows of Forex decreases. There’s also the fact that many of these foreign Banks… and to a much a lesser extent the local ones, are allowed to hold significant sums of forex in locations overseas.
Most businesses locally conduct all their business transactions in Forex…and only use the TT dollar when they do transactions locally. It is why even if you have a US account in a local bank you cannot gain immediate access to it… and there is much more to that.
Most State Enterprises carry significant overdrafts which have to be secured by the state… and it is my belief that these liabilities amount to billions of dollars and do not show up in reports of the Ministry of Finance. Most if not all is “off balance sheet” as they say.
I will add in closing that a significant part of the profits of Banks are derived from transactions conducted via credit cards. I will also add that transactions deemed to be suspicious almost certainly makeup more than half the money in circulation… and is extra to what is accounted in allocations from the Ministry of Finance in its annual budgets.
In summary the Financial woes being faced by the state and the people of this country are not being faced by the Banks….indeed they are benefitting from it… and so are certain privileged persons and politicians in our society.
And of course all illicit or dark money would prefer to be laundered so as to be domiciled in a Bank located in the West and it is known that the Canadian Banks are the ones most welcoming to such transactions.
Eugene Reynald
